The Chinese interpreter bends over her and cries, “Talk! If you talk, the imperial army will leave you with your life.”

Between her moans I think I can make out the words: “Go to the devil, you Japanese dogs.”

“What is she saying?” asks Lieutenant Oka.

“She is insulting the gentlemen of the imperial army.”

“Tell her that her friends have confessed. She’s the only one who’s not cooperating. What point is there in resisting?”

She curls up on her stomach with her hands tied behind her back, shuddering with every move. The Lieutenant kicks her and, as she jerks onto her side, I see her face, which is blue and swollen.

He crushes her head with his boot and smiles.

“Tell her that if she doesn’t talk, I’ll ram this poker up her ass.”

The interpreter quickly does as he is told. The moaning stops. All eyes are riveted on the motionless figure. The Lieutenant gives a signal to the interpreter, who picks up a pen and a piece of paper. Suddenly the woman gets up to her knees, like a fury rising from the depths of hell, and she starts screaming, “Kill me! Kill me! You’re all damned…”

The Lieutenant doesn’t need the interpreter to grasp the gist of what she is saying. He has only to glance at the two torturers and they throw themselves at the woman and hold her by her shoulders, as he grabs the glowing iron.

A foul-smelling smoke rises up as the screaming woman’s flesh is seared. I look away. The Lieutenant puts the iron back into the fire and stares at me with an enigmatic smile.

“Stop for now. We’ll start again later.”

He takes me off to see other rooms and comments with all the minute detail of an impassioned scientist on the hooks, whips, sticks, needles, boiling oil, and water spiced with red-hot chilies. Then he offers me a glass of sake in his office.

“I’m sorry, I never drink during the day.”

He bursts out laughing.

“A prison is always a kingdom in its own right. We make our own laws here. Sake activates the brain. Without it our imaginations would run dry and we’d soon be exhausted.”

I take my leave, claiming that I am nearly late for a meeting. On the doorstep he says, “You will come back soon, won’t you?”

I nod vaguely in his direction.

Back in my room, I write my report for Captain Nakamura, and in it I praise Lieutenant Oka: “He is a meticulous man who is devoted to the Emperor. He must be left to act as he sees fit and with the complete cooperation of his assistants. An outsider would disrupt the precision of his work and would interfere with the smooth running of the interrogations. I myself would ask you not to send me there again, Captain. My visit there fortified my conviction that we must never allow ourselves to be taken alive by the enemy.”

Three days later a soldier brings me a message from Lieutenant Oka, who would like to talk to me about something, so I go straight over to see him. Despite the heat, the officer is wearing a new tunic over his shirt, and a pair of boots that shine in the sunlight.

He greets me with a smile.

“I have good news for you. The man you saw hanging in the courtyard cracked. In our last raid we caught a fifteenyear-old boy and his interrogation will take place this evening. Would you like to attend?”

The word “interrogation” makes me feel sick. I compliment him on the competence of the Chinese interpreter and explain that my presence would be pointless. Quite unperturbed, he looks me in the eye and insists, “You really don’t want to come? What a shame. He’s a very good-looking boy and I’ve already chosen several good strong men who’ll keep him talking all night. It’s going to be marvelous.”

It is eighty-five degrees in the shade, but the Lieutenant’s words make me shiver. My only reply is to mumble something about not liking that sort of spectacle.

“I thought you liked that sort of thing,” he says, amazed.

“Lieutenant, your job is difficult and very important to the expansion of Japan and the glory of the Emperor. I wouldn’t want to distract you from it. Allow me to decline your thoughtful invitation.”

I can see the disappointment flit across the man’s face and he looks at me sadly. Lieutenant Oka has shaved so closely that the little mustache on his upper lip looks as if it is quite separate and might fly off at any moment.

“Come on, Lieutenant,” I say, patting his shoulder, “you get back to your work. The glory of the Empire depends on it.”

57

I have waited for Min at the crossroads for a whole week, and in the afternoons I have gone up and down the boulevard outside the university in the vain hope of spotting his face.

I find the address that Tang gave me; it is a run-down house in the poor, working people’s quarter. There are children running in the streets shouting to each other and an old woman wearily beating out her sheets.

A neighbor appears.

“I have a book to give back to Tang.”

“She’s been arrested.”

Fear is out stalking the streets of my town. The Japanese seem determined to arrest someone. I am amazed that I am still free, and I lie awake at night listening for the soldiers’ rhythmic approach, the bark of dogs and the muffled thud of a fist knocking on our door. The silence is more terrifying than any amount of noise would be. I look at the ceiling, the dressing table with its mirror edged in blue silk, the writing desk on which only a vase of roses stands out against the darkness… All of these might be broken, ripped apart, burned. Our house might soon be like Jing’s, a charred skeleton.

I remember Min as he looked in the street. He had been running, his hair was a mess, he didn’t know that prison was waiting for him just around the corner. He said, “He loves you, he’s just told me… you’ll have to choose between us.” I was annoyed-it sounded like an insult, an order, and it wounded my pride. All I said was “Don’t make such a scene”: those were almost my last words to him.

I miss Jing just as much as Min; his bad moods and his aloofness seem so endearing now. How can I save them? How can I contact the Resistance? How can I visit them in prison? To add to their miseries, they were born rich: the difference between their own bedrooms and the damp cells must be unbearable. They are bound to get ill. Apparently you can soften up the guards with money… I’ll give everything I have.

A few shots ring out in the street and a dog howls, then the town drops back into silence like a pebble thrown into a bottomless well.

I am hot and I am cold. I am frightened, but my hate gives me strength. I open a drawer in the chest and find a little sewing case, a present for my sixteenth birthday. I take out the scissors with their gold handles and sharp, pointed little blades.

Pressed against my face, the precious weapon feels colder than a stalactite.

And I wait.